The proposed research will analyze the value of the Medicare health insurance program from the perspective of individual beneficiaries. The high per beneficiary cost of the Medicare program implies that the government has effectively mandated that a large fraction of the elderly's expenditures are allocated to purchasing Medicare health insurance. However, because of the lack of exogenous variation in Medicare, there has been little research on individual's willingness to pay for this insurance. We propose to circumvent this difficulty using experimental data specially designed to elicit demand choices in response to hypothetical variation in Medicare coverage. The data are being collected in an Experiment Module 9f wave III of the Health and Retirement Survey. The project will validate these data by exploring both internal consistency and conformity with economic theory, and then model and estimate individuals' willingness-to-pay for Medicare insurance. Based on this work, we will then develop new survey questions which we will propose for inclusion in upcoming waves of the HRS as well as the survey of Asset and Health Dynamics among the Oldest-Old (AHEAD), for future analysis as part of a longer-term research agenda of which the research in this proposal is the first stage.